16.12.2009

Bamford business hit for £90,000

Daylesford Organics, a business whose directors include Sir Anthony Bamford and his wife Carole, was fined £65,000 and ordered to pay £25,000 costs after pleading guilty to breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act and failure to ensure the safety of its employees, following a fatal accident with a telehandler.

Tony Cripps, 57, worked for Daylesford Organic and was collecting elderflowers for Lady Bamford when he was run over by a JCB telehandler after bouncing out of the bucket he was riding in when the machine hit a rut.
See Original report

Gloucester Crown Court was told that the accident was the consequence of the “relaxed” culture at the farm, with employees and contractors regularly using vehicles on which they were not adequately trained.

Ian Dixey, for the prosecution, told the court that He was one of a team of market gardeners who had been asked by the kitchen staff to gather elderflowers from the hedges to make elderflower lemonade for Lady Bamford.

“This was the first time they had been asked to gather elderflowers from the farm and no one gave any consideration as to how it should be done safely and efficiently and an unsafe method of working developed. With the men standing on the telehandler’s roof and in the bucket to do their picking earlier in the day.”

“We say the failures which put employees at risk really occurred because of a relaxed culture which had evolved on the farm whereby both workers and contractors used vehicles for purposes for which they were not intended and the management failed to put in place control measures to prevent this,” added Dixey.

Judge William Hart said: “The accident was contributed to by this relaxed culture. It should have been obvious to all concerned that the use of the Loadall in this way was a hazardous way of proceeding.”

“All involved should have realised this was an unsafe way of going about transportation. I accept a culture had developed where people were lifted in telehandler buckets to work at height. But they were using the vehicles in inappropriate ways. It is accepted that insufficient attention was paid to practical steps to ring about equally exemplary health and safety practices.”

Adrian Darbishire, for Daylesford Organics, said that since the tragedy there had been a "culture of constant vigilance and awareness" at the farm to improve safety standards. Neither of the Bamfords was in court.

Vertikal Comment

Given that Daylesford Organics is tied up with JCB which claims to be the world’s leading telehandler manufacturer (Daylesford Organic Ltd is owned by JCB) it is surprising that the farm was not furnished with at least one aerial work platform attachment, if Cripps had been standing or sitting in the work platform (maybe even with a harness on) the guardrails would almost certainly have saved him.